Our "It's a great VGT rate, let's just go" Eastern Caribbean cruise - Jan 24, 2015

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

daneenm said:
Enjoying your TR. Thank you so much for sharing it with us!

Thanks for following along! :goodvibes

lizzyb · Feb 8, 2015

Palo brunch looks great! We are trying it for the first time on our upcoming cruise. Looking forward to it!

lmhall2000 · Feb 8, 2015

I'm so glad you got up for the sunrise! That is a must do each day of my trips and I'll admit I went back to bed one day, but most days I'd take a nap around 2:00 on the deck with my comfy blanket

Glad no one got pics of me doing that!

What was your VGT rate? I saw some drop as low as $890 pp for Magic this next month!! And $560 for the 3rd and 4th passengers...if we only lived in Florida! HA!

Love your pictures!!

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

lizzyb said:
Palo brunch looks great! We are trying it for the first time on our upcoming cruise. Looking forward to it!

Palo is really nice. It's such a quiet and relaxing restaurant. We are still undecided if we prefer dinner or brunch there as both are really good.

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

Tuesday – St. Thomas, USVI - January 27th.

I woke up at 6:30 and and we were just sailing into St Thomas. I should probably add here, that there was a vibration that could be felt in our cabin when they started to do any turning. This did prove handy when you wanted to notice that something was going on. I took a few pics from our verandah and watched the car headlights as they wound their way down through the hills to get into town. So peaceful and beautiful all at the same time. :cloud9:

I pulled back the curtains so that we could watch our approach from bed for a few minutes. It made me think of those folks that do the Mediterranean cruises, and what it must be like to watch all the wonderful ports arrive through your window.

The phone rang for our wake up call while I was outside and Scott answered but he said nobody was there. Turns out that I must have not hung up all the way when I set it up the night before. We found out that if you don’t answer, or if it THINKS you don’t answer, it calls you back in about 5 mins. I eventually figured it out and heard Mickey telling us there were “Big doings going on!!” :flower3:

LOL I just love that wake up call!! Anyway, we were more or less up and didn’t need the wake up call, but it did help get Scott out of bed. I ordered coffee from room service while we got ready.

There were three cruise ships at our pier today and we watched this one arrive. The other was the Carnival Sunshine and the Oasis of the Seas came in later in the morning but was at a different pier.

Almost everyone was on their verandah oohing and ahhing over the beautiful yachts in the marina.

This one in particular was incredible and HUGE. :eek:

Later on I googled it and it’s available for charter for a measly $1,000,000.00 per week, plus expenses!! I guess if you can afford $1 mil for a week the expenses don’t matter! I doubt they give *GT rates either! :sad2:

The sun had started to come up and it was so pretty looking at Charolotte Amalie as the sun started to creep over the mountain.

All of them had crew on them that were working on them. This one left as we sat there.

The Bones schooner also came past to load up for the half day sail and snorkel.

We all met up and ate breakfast in Cabanas as Mum and Mo had gone on ahead of us by a few minutes. Just cereal for Scott and I this morning as the food-fest from the last few days was really beginning to hit us hard. :laughing:

After grabbing our stuff from our cabins we then went on to D Lounge for our 8:45 am excursion. I had booked the Best of St. Thomas Island Tour and shopping as Scott and I have been to St. Thomas once before and had done a snorkeling tour so we wanted to see more of the island and Mum and Mo had never been before. There was a big group in D Lounge and after everyone got checked in and got their stickers we were directed downstairs and out of the ship. They made sure to get people who needed the elevator out first and then the rest of the group walked down the stairs to Deck 1 midship. There was quite a line to get off the ship just from our group and as we left the ship we were split into groups as they filled each of the open air buses up. My guess is that they held about 25 people each. We were pulled out of line, as we were a party of 4, but we had to split up on the van into 2 and 2 but we got lucky and at least were a row in front and behind each other. It was a tight squeeze and the vehicles were absolutely full. :crowded:

Talk about an absolutely gorgeous day though. It couldn’t have been more perfect. The sun was shining and it was about 72 degrees with a very slight breeze. We left the boarding area, which was in the shopping area next to the dock at about 9:10 am and the tour started by working its way through town and then went up the roads winding around and up the side of the mountain. :love:

The first stop was a scenic overlook and the driver did a quick overview narration of St. Thomas as we looked down on the port and Charlotte Amalie.

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

There were some vendors set up selling various goods such as handbags, jewelry, dresses, shirts, hats and nick knacks. Also a guy trying to get you to take a photo with a donkey, but we passed on that. It wasn’t as aggressive as other Caribbean ports and nobody was really pushing you to buy anything, which was really nice. The prices were good and Mo got some necklaces for folks back home, so while I was looking I found a necklace for $10 that was cute. :flower1:

Next stop was a quick photo op of Magen's Bay, it was a quick in and out of the bus to take the picture.

Then we were off to a bar and gift shop called Mountain Top.

Apparently they are famous for their banana daiquiris and it would have been a shame to miss them, so we each got one (except Mum) and I forgot to take a photo! :mad:

They were very good though. The gift shop was large with really good prices. Mum got two t shirts for $10 and afterwards I wish I had taken more time to really take a good look as there are still things that I remember that I wish I’d bought! :rolleyes:

We had a 30 minute stop there and in addition to the shopping and the bar there was a nice scenic overlook. As you can see, Mum wasn't looking at the camera, she has a very short attention span when it comes to taking photos! We teased her about it the entire trip. :goodvibes

The Oasis of the Seas arrived as we were up there.

Our last stop was at a place called the Great House which was a large sprawling place where there was another scenic overlook, an aviary, gardens and gift shop. It is used locally for weddings and other functions. There was a lot to see there, but we only had 30 minutes.

There were also a lot of places where you could sit down, and there was free rum punch being served in one spot, but we didn’t have any. I’ve had many versions of the free rum punch in the Caribbean and none of them have been my friend! pirate:

This place was fairly busy as there were several excursion groups there from the other cruise ships. They had an observation deck up some stairs at the top, so Mo, Scott and I went up there while Mum sat in the shade.

We all took a look through the gift shop and I bought a Christmas ornament. Here’s a photo of the necklace and the ornament. I think the ornament was $15.00 and it was in a nice box so I didn’t have to worry about it breaking going home.

After our 30 minute stop there we headed back into town and were given the opportunity to either stop in town and make our own way back, or go back to the ship. We decided to go back to the ship, not many people made the stop in town and they seemed to drop you off on a rather precarious street with no sidewalk but it was right in the middle of town next to a market, so I assume it was really convenient.

Overall impression of the tour was that it was good and I’d definitely do it again if only for the good shopping at Mountain Top. It worked out great for our group where we wanted a fairly short excursion that wasn't too active. :thumbsup2

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

It was a little after noon when we got back. We dropped off our things in our cabins before heading up and having a bite to eat in Cabanas.

We watched from our verandah as tours came back and the chartered yachts were washed.
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Scott spotted a turtle out in the water. How on earth he saw it is beyond me, this is zoomed all the way in. :magnify:

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After a while to let everyone relax a bit and catch their second wind, we decide to do the skyway ride up the hill behind the ship. After various wrong turns we eventually worked our way out of the shops next to the dock. I felt bad that I hadn’t been tour guide extraordinaire on this one and didn’t really know the way.

It looks like it would be a direct shot off the ship if you walked forward along the pier, but that dead ends with a fence. You actually have to work your way through the shopping plaza to get there, and a little aft of midship is the entrance to the shopping plaza to use.
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It definitely was a hike for Mum with all the wrong turns. We got our tickets and climbed the stairs to get to the boarding place. FYI if you have someone who doesn’t do stairs well there are quite a few of them. Mum does really well for 86, but she definitely could have done without the stairs. The journey up was pleasant enough according to everone else, I wouldn’t really know as I stared at my feet the entire time while thinking of our impending doom while plummeting to the ground. :sick:

Did I mention I HATE heights!!! :ssst:

And the car thingy swung around a bit…not my ideal way of travel but I had seen Mandymouse’s photos from the top and it just looked like a neat place to go.
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Despite the scrape-with-death ride up there and back, :crazy2:

I’d definitely do it again. There were also stairs once you got to the top, so definitely a challenge for Mum, but she made it. I also had the thoughts of the yummy cold adult beverage to be had at the restaurant at the top to inspire me. Trust me on this, it's every bit as delicious as it looks. :woohoo:

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So it was a Bushwacker for Mo and I and a local island beer for Scott.
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Mum elected not to try alcohol and stairs. It’s a great view of the cruise ships and of the island and I’m glad we did it (and survived it). We got some good photos up there and there was also free WIFI so we did some quick posts to Facebook showing the view both of the ships and of the booze.
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We didn’t stay up there too long, just long enough to have another Bushwacker and beer and we made our way back to the loading dock to go down. One was just leaving, but they run about every 5 minutes so we sat and waited for the next one. They also don’t stop, so you have to be mobile enough to step on, similar to the rides at WDW that have continuous loading they do seem to slow though.

After we got back Scott and I opened our bottle of Prosecco and sat on the verandah for a little while….ahhh..did I mention how much I just LOVE St. Thomas, it’s one of my favorite ports.
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We then decided go up to Deck 13 to take sunset photos and snapped these of the skyway and the area at the top.
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There were 2 sunsets tonight, one as the sun went behind the hills…
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And then another as it set on the horizon…
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ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

We spent longer than we had planned up there as we got talking twice to different people (I have been known to be a chatty Kathy :hyper2:

) but the view is just wonderful. Satellite Falls was lit up and the falls were working. This was the first time we had seen them as it had been too breezy on the previous days for them to be turned on.

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The Carnival ship headed out. We had been first in port and we were going to be last to leave.

We made it back to the room with just enough time to get ready for dinner and Reiza had already been and left us this little cutie.

Tonight we were back in Animator’s Palate and it was the animation magic show. Photo courtesy of Andrew.

Mo, Scott and I all got busy coloring but Mum decided we could do hers for her. She’s 86, not 6, if you remember.

Here’s mine.

I really love the show, but the servers are so rushed that night with trying to work around it and the menu is limited because of it. They do one appetizer which consists of (left to right) duck breast, mozzarella and tomato (with bite gone before I remember to take the photo) and shrimp. We got two of them and split them. Scott had the duck, I ate the shrimp and Mo ate the mozzarella. Mum didn’t want any of them.

This little guy is just so cute on the appetizer plate!

Apologies for the photos tonight.

They didn’t come out great at all. I guess I had flash issues, and Scott’s didn’t come out at all, so I forget what he had. I also forgot to take a photo of the bread! I think this was my sea bass (or it could have been Halibut) and it was really good.

I also had the sweet temptations for dessert.

Here are our masterpieces. First Mo’s and mine, then Mum’s, and then Scott’s.

This is probably my least favorite night in the dining room now. It used to be Pirate’s Night but this evening you could feel the stress from the servers as they had to rush so much to get everything coordinated and I don’t do stress on vacation – even if it is someone elses!

We left dinner and went back to the cabin. I read for a little while and got caught up with my trip report and we finished our wine from dinner. We both fell asleep reading – it had been an exhausting day - we’d had to get off the ship and actually do something!

mandymouse · Feb 8, 2015

Thanks for the FB posts taunting us from Paradise Point with your wonderful views and lovely cocktails ::yes::

Do you remember your last visit to St. Thomas ? Where you and Scott came back rather squiffy from your excursion (lol), that was a fun evening chatting and drinking before having to rush to get ready for dinner

Anyway, another great day. Loving all your pics, and I look forward to your next instalment

OregonDisneyDreamer · Feb 8, 2015

We were on the same cruise! We had early seating and were traveling with our 6 year old so a bit of a different experience. I'm really enjoying hearing about your trip! Fun to relive some things and to see new things from your perspective.

We loved the SKyline Lounge. We also did the passport, but over multiple nights. They goofed and ended up miscounting and gave us an 8th one! I loved the Berryoska.

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

OregonDisneyDreamer said:
We were on the same cruise! We had early seating and were traveling with our 6 year old so a bit of a different experience. I'm really enjoying hearing about your trip! Fun to relive some things and to see new things from your perspective.

We loved the SKyline Lounge. We also did the passport, but over multiple nights. They goofed and ended up miscounting and gave us an 8th one! I loved the Berryoska.

If I had spaced my passport out I probably would have enjoyed them a lot more. :teeth:

The Berryoska was the one DH ordered and didn't like it, but I thought it was good. It was nice that they let DH have Manattans and counted it towards the 7. We did a cruise with friends and their children a couple of years ago and it was a whole new experience for us too. Different but good different to see a whole new side of Disney cruising.

ukintheus · Feb 8, 2015

mandymouse said:
Thanks for the FB posts taunting us from Paradise Point with your wonderful views and lovely cocktails

Do you remember your last visit to St. Thomas ? Where you and Scott came back rather squiffy from your excursion (lol), that was a fun evening chatting and drinking before having to rush to get ready for dinner

Anyway, another great day. Loving all your pics, and I look forward to your next instalment

Yes, the last time we were in St. Thomas was the bad free rum punch experience! LOL It was a fun day though. We should have just given up on dinner

.

ukintheus · Feb 9, 2015

Wednesday – San Juan – January 28th.

Pre-trip San Juan story. :listen:

I had been really undecided about what we would do in San Juan. None of the DCL excursions really sounded good to me, so I decided to piece together a walking tour and do Old San Juan on our own. The biggest thing up for debate today was whether Mum would be able to make all the walking. We had brought along a transport chair that is really lightweight that we used at WDW last year, and so the final vote was to take it and we were really glad we did. Old San Juan is hilly, hot and humid but we are SO glad we took the time to walk it and take a look around. :thumbsup2

OK, so to kick off the day, I woke up at 6:30 am but decided to stay in bed. I could feel the shimmy of the ship docking but was too lazy to get up. We both hadn't slept well as we both got pretty hot in the night (we ended up sleeping with only the sheet every night, we never could get the cabin really cool enough for us.) Finally we got up at 7:30 am and we were already docked. Luckily, for the purposes of a good trip report, Mo and Mum had been up and taken these photos of us coming into port. :goodvibes

Once again it was Cabanas for breakfast. Eggs Benedict for me and for Scott these little egg muffin type sandwich creations that he pieced together.

We went back to our cabins, packed our day bags, and headed off the ship at about 9:15 am. There were several cruise ships in port and so it was busy. Here's a shot of the pier.

I had printed out a walking tour to El Morro from the internet, and also a map, and with a little bit of a struggle to get started on the right track we were soon on our way with Scott reading the map and Mo and I taking it in turns to read out the historical/fun facts that were part of the tour.

We walked down and to the left from the cruise ship piers and started our tour at La Casita. Not many vendors were there on our way out but it was a very busy little market place when we came back.

From there we went across the street and over to the beginning of the Paseo de la Princessa (on the left in this photo - look for the reddish entrance blocks.)

The Paseo is really pretty and definitely worth the walk to go and see.

There were gardens on the right hand side of the walk that were pretty and had some art pieces in them.

We also found a couple of cats along the way. Cats are a protected species in Old San Juan and you saw them just about everywhere. It was already warm and humid and so shady spots were feeling good despite it being early in the day.

A monument and to the far left, the beginning of the old city wall.

Coming out of the tree lined paseo we passed the Old San Juan jail on the right. It is now the Puerto Rican Tourism Company. The online tour made it a stop, but we elected to keep going.

Looking back to the paseo.

At the end, just passed the Old San Juan jail is the Raices Fountain. It's a very pretty fountain and the bay is right in front of it. The Segway tour from the Fantasy (stickers give it away! LOL) was here at the same time we were, we ran into them a couple of times and it looked like it would be fun.

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ukintheus · Feb 9, 2015

From the fountain we followed the city wall with the San Juan bay on our left.

Another piece of art. San Juan was a real cultural mix of old and new art pieces.
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It was interesting to see the height of the City wall and the tour described it as being hollow in the middle of the stone. It was incredibly thick.
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The wall and the walk continued up to the base of El Morro, but there is no way to get from the end of the walk to the fort and although the tour said that there were great views at the end of the walk, and then you would double back on yourself, we elected not to.
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We went through the San Juan city gate and began our way up the streets to El Morro.
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The hills were pretty steep in places but there always seemed to be a plaza or gardens along the way where you could rest if you want to.
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This garden had a cat statue and there were several cats here but they keep to themselves pretty much. We joked that the city does a good job of keeping the garden/litter boxes nice and freshly dug! :laughing:

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Quaint stuff everywhere.
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ukintheus · Feb 9, 2015

The tour took us through the gate and we continued north to the Plaza San Jose and then the Plaza del Quinto Centenario where we stopped and took a break from all the uphill walking! We walked through the plaza and the edge of the El Morro grounds were in front of us.

There is a cemetery on the right but we by passed it.
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The walk down to the entrance is a fair way, and it is slightly uphill. There was one kite flying and it looked like there was a place set up on the very far left of the land where someone was renting kites, but that's sheer speculation on my part! :rolleyes:

It was hard to get your head wrapped around the fact that this is all part of the US Parks Department as you definitely don't feel any US vibe going on at all.

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There was a short line to pay and get inside. We didn't see all that there was as we were hot and pretty tired and it would have required steps for Mum, so we all agreed to give it a miss. These are photos of the main level and some of the exhibits they had in there.
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Views from the ocean side of the Fort.
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We were all pretty warm by this point and so we rested for a little while in the Fort chapel while we figured out what we would do next.
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ukintheus · Feb 9, 2015

We had been at the Fort about 45 minutes at this point and decided that we were all happy to make our way back into the town area. Scott took us on a leisurely, meandering path back down. We must have gone through at least 5 plazas along the way. They are everywhere!

The blue slate cobbled streets are famous. They certainly made life with a wheelchair a little tricky, but they were really pretty and just gave the whole place a wonderful quaint look. :goodvibes

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Plaza...

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Typical streets in Old San Juan - just so neat!
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Further back into town and the shopping areas were a little more busy.
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While I was doing research on OSJ, I had scoped out a restaurant that is one of two who claim to have made the first pina colada, and guess what!?? It was on our way back! :bounce:

So we stopped at Barrachina's for lunch and a famous piña colada. We got there about noon, so it was perfect timing.

We really were this pink from the heat. :laughing:

I think it was about 82-83 degrees with pretty high humidity, plus the hills added to the workout plan.

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We all had a piña colada. And, yes, they were delicious!
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Scott and I had the Criollo Steak sandwich which was good. Mum and Mo had a tuna sandwich. They were smarter than us to get a cold sandwich, but everything was tasty.
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Scott moved onto a local beer as he isn't too keen on fruity drinks.
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After a lovely lunch we walked the short walk back to the ship.
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pink5683 · Feb 9, 2015

Loving your report so far! We also just booked a last minute adults only Eastern Caribbean cruise, so this report is ideal!

Did you have a specific site you used to plan your walking tour of San Juan? It seems like just what DH and I want to do when we are there.

ukintheus · Feb 10, 2015

pink5683 said:
Loving your report so far! We also just booked a last minute adults only Eastern Caribbean cruise, so this report is ideal!

Did you have a specific site you used to plan your walking tour of San Juan? It seems like just what DH and I want to do when we are there.

Thank you for following along.

I used the puertoricodaytrips website and their self guided walking tour of OSJ. I printed it out and took it with us but we ended at El Morro and their continues on as it's a part of a 3 day tour. It was easy to navigate our way back down to the port from there though. I also found a map online by searching for Old San Juan maps and there was one that had all all the tourist spots on it. Search for OSJ tourist map and you should find it. Have fun! We loved it there, it was clean, there were no street hawkers and it felt extremely safe to walk around.

pink5683 · Feb 10, 2015

ukintheus said:
Thank you for following along. I used the puertoricodaytrips website and their self guided walking tour of OSJ. I printed it out and took it with us but we ended at El Morro and their continues on as it's a part of a 3 day tour. It was easy to navigate our way back down to the port from there though. I also found a map online by searching for Old San Juan maps and there was one that had all all the tourist spots on it. Search for OSJ tourist map and you should find it. Have fun! We loved it there, it was clean, there were no street hawkers and it felt extremely safe to walk around.

Thanks for the info! Going to look into it now!

ukintheus · Feb 10, 2015

After a short rest in our staterooms we decided to go up to satellite falls and we found some loungers in the shade. As the ship was fairly quiet, we left Mum there to take a nap....she was just resting her eyes according to her

... and went and rode Aquaduck. The lines were fairly short and the water was nice and cool (chilly!) It was fun and we all had a good laugh at how we were instantly cooled down and were no longer complaining about being hot. Back at the loungers we sat for a good while. The front of the ship offered some great views.

This is San Cristobel. It looks to be an easy walk from the ship also.

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Here is Senor Frog's - it's right at the end of the cruise pier. True fact - despite our reputation of sourcing alcohol while in port, we have never been inside a Senor Frogs! :eek: